The Doomsday Clock is now set at 11.55pm. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean the world is going to end in literally five minutes time, although maybe it will in 11 months time if the Mayan prophecy comes true.

The Doomsday Clock has been with us since 1947 and the start of the Cold War. At that time it was set to seven minutes to midnight before leaping forward to two minutes to midnight in 1952. It’s moved back and forth ever since.

The idea is to track how close the world is to ending. The Doomsday Clock is nothing more than a metaphor, but the fact it’s always just a few minutes away from midnight suggests humanity is living on the precipice.

This report states it’s now set at four minutes to midnight, but everything else I have read states it’s actually at five minutes to midnight after having been brought forward one minute. Thankfully it’s meaningless, so it doesn’t actually matter a jot.